Consideration of the designated matter pursuant to standing
order 125 relating to the impact of the Conservative government's
funding and funding cuts on persons with disabilities and their
families.

ADVOCACY RESOURCE CENTRE FOR THE HANDICAPPED.

ONTARIANS WITH DISABILITIES ACT COMMITTEE.

The Vice-Chair (Mr Dwight Duncan): I call the committee to
order. We have one delegation today to speak to the committee, a
group called ARCH, led by David Baker, executive director, David
Lepofsky, co-chair, and Steven Kean.

Gentlemen, welcome. Please read your name into the record as
you begin to speak.

Mr David Baker: Thank you very much. My name is David Baker.
I'm executive director of ARCH. With me, and I will explain later
the relevance of their participation, are David Lepofsky,
co-chair of the Ontarians with Disabilities Act Committee, and
Steve Kean from the ODA committee. We'll be referring to three
documents which I hope you have before you. The first one is
headed Impact of Funding and Funding Cuts on Persons with
Disabilities and their Families; the second is ARCH Alert; and
the third is Enact the Ontarians with Disabilities Act Before
Imposing Provincial Budget Cuts.

I'll be leading off. On behalf of ARCH's president, Ron
McInnes, I would like to thank the members of the committee for
inviting ARCH to present. We were pleased to have been invited,
notwithstanding that we had not applied to present.

ARCH is a legal centre serving Ontario's disabled community.
We have 55 member organizations representing most of the
provincial disability organizations in Ontario, and we have
representation from all disabilities and regions across the
province. Notwithstanding that membership, ARCH rarely takes a
position directly on an issue. Our role, as you will see today,
is to provide information to disability organizations, serve as
legal counsel to them, and represent individuals.

With respect to the committee's deliberations, we know that
you have already heard from a number of disability organizations
represented on our board of directors and also from coalitions we
serve as legal counsel. What we propose doing is raising two
issues with you briefly, and then I intend to address you in a
different capacity, as legal counsel to the ODA committee, which
is here represented by my colleagues.

The two issues we thought it would be useful to raise with you
as points of information are two areas where the government has
actually increased funding in the area of disability. We thought
it was important to present these, but also to present what in
practice is happening in those areas.

The first one, and I'll refer to them very briefly, concerns
the relationship between housing and long-term care or attendant
care for people with disabilities. This is an area where the
government has committed significant additional resources, and we
know that there is increasing demand in this area as hospitals
close and also as the population ages and the number of people
who require this kind of service increases.

What we wanted the committee to be aware of was the fact that
there is an organization -- it happens to be in Waterloo -- where
the government has committed an additional $800,000 to provide
attendant care services to people with disabilities. This
organization has a long, long waiting list -- they estimate 25
years -- for these kinds of services. These are people who are in
chronic care hospitals or other, often acute care, hospitals,
waiting for this service.

The problem, in a nutshell, is this: With the disappearance of
supported housing and rent-geared-to-income housing, there are
only two people off the waiting list who are able to pay the
rents that must be paid at market level in order to live in the
community with the benefit of this attendant care. So these are
people who, unfortunately, carry on in much more expensive forms
of care because they cannot afford the rents that must be paid in
order to benefit from this excellent program. The program is
concerned, because they are going to have most of their budget
unspent at the end of the year, that the money will be taken away
on the basis that the need is not there, but the need obviously
is there. There's an enormous waiting list for services of this
kind. It's the kind of thing which the hospital restructuring
committee recommends should be happening. A dilemma.

1540

We present the facts; we ask you to think about the
implications of that. But clearly the government policy is not
working out for the people it's designed to benefit in the way
the government presumably intended it should.

The other area, which commences at page 4 of the brief,
concerns education. You may be aware that the funding structure
for most grants to school boards is on a per-registered-student
basis. There is a special education component and a general
component to the amount which is transferred to each school board
by the province. The amount transferred as part of the special
education component has actually increased with this government.
The general component of the transfer to the school boards, of
course, has been substantially reduced.

Because these grants are not based on actual expenditures,
there is nothing at first glance that would prevent school boards
from doing what is in fact happening out there, which is that a
massive, disproportionate percentage of the cuts is affecting
people with disabilities. The aides that permit students to be
integrated into regular classes are being cut, special classes
are being cut, and specialized services such as speech and
language pathologists and psychologists are being cut by school
boards.

I suppose the question one might raise is, what does this have
to do with the provincial government? Well, under the Education
Act, subsection 8(2), the Minister of Education is responsible to
ensure that each and every exceptional pupil in the province is
receiving an appropriate education, with appropriate special
education programs and services. Under Ontario regulation 306,
the ministry is required to receive plans that will outline the
programs that are to be provided and any changes in the programs,
and the ministry must approve those changes.

What is happening is that while the province is pointing,
justifiably, to the fact that money is being increased for
special education, the reality, as could easily be determined by
looking at the plans, is that the programs are being massively
cut for exceptional pupils, notwithstanding the increase in
funding. The question I would ask is, is the minister prepared to
use the authority the minister has to insist that the provincial
grants be reflected in the way in which programs are delivered to
exceptional pupils?

Those points of information being over, I would like to turn
to Mr Lepofsky, who is co-chair of the Ontarians with
Disabilities Act Committee. ARCH serves this committee as legal
counsel, and this is the only coalition which ARCH represents in
this way which has not already presented to you. Mr Lepofsky has
received the Order of Canada. If I may refer to the statement
made at the time, Mr Lepofsky "has used his professional
knowledge to work tirelessly to protect the rights of disabled
people. He has helped to educate and sensitize the general public
and legislators to the obstacles faced each day by disabled
persons."

Without any further ado, I'd like to turn things over to him.
He'll be referring to the third brief in front of you.

Mr David Lepofsky: Thank you very much, Mr Baker, and thank
you to the committee for this opportunity. I begin by indicating
two things: First, although I am a public servant, I am appearing
in a personal capacity, not purporting to speak on behalf of my
employer. Second, while Mr Baker has indicated that I have been
honoured by my country for the work that I have done in this
field, I hope that today constitutes an effort at continuing the
responsibility I have undertaken by accepting that award, by
seeking to assist in the education of this committee about
barriers that we face as people with disabilities.

Let me introduce us by indicating first what the Ontarians
with Disabilities Act Committee, of which I am co-chair, is. We
are a voluntary, non-profit, non-funded coalition of individuals
and community organizations which has united together for one
purpose, and that is to secure the passage in Ontario of a new
law which will achieve a barrier-free society for people with
disabilities, a law we call the Ontarians with Disabilities Act.
In making our presentation today, we wish to draw upon the
knowledge and the expertise which our coalition uniquely has,
involving more than 40 of our major community disability groups
as well as hundreds of individuals with disabilities from across
this province.

We wish to build upon the presentations you've heard up until
today and to communicate a very simple, clear message. Our
message is this: The cuts which the government has imposed have
had a disproportionately harmful impact on people with
disabilities in this province; those cuts have hurt the most
vulnerable of the citizens of this province; those cuts have been
planned and implemented or will be implemented in a fashion which
is not designed to avoid this adverse disproportionate impact;
the harms that those cuts will impose on us are preventable; and
the way in which they could best be prevented would be for the
government to pass an Ontarians with Disabilities Act before it
undertakes its program of cuts and restructuring so that the act
we seek can achieve that which is not being achieved now, and
that is a government process of reorganization in a fashion which
does not create new barriers for us.

Let me turn first, to make these points, to explain what an
Ontarians with Disabilities Act would be. People with
disabilities, it is trite to say, face numerous barriers in
seeking access to all aspects of Ontario life, whether in public
transit, education, jobs, government or private services and the
like. The fact of the matter is that it hurts our society that
these barriers exist. It hurts the 17% of the public who have
disabilities and it hurts the rest of you who during your lives
will acquire a disability to have these barriers remain. Indeed,
in fighting to remove these barriers we are fighting a battle not
only for us but for those of you are still, temporarily,
able-bodied. It also hurts our society for these barriers to
remain because our society loses the advantage of the potential
of people with disabilities who wish to contribute and suffers
the costs of maintaining us outside the workforce, more often
than not when we want to be inside the workforce as taxpayers and
contributing members of society.

With this problem in place, what do we need done? We need two
things done: We need old barriers that now exist identified and
torn down; we need new barriers prevented before they are
created. Aren't there any programs on the books to do this now?
Well, we have programs and laws. We have the Human Rights Code
and the Charter of Rights and the like, but 15 years of
experience proven that they do not solve the problem. Many, if
not most, of the old barriers are still there and many new ones
are coming along. We know these programs and legislation, while
important, aren't good enough. What about voluntary measures? No
one with any real-life experience with a disability believes that
voluntary measures work. They hadn't worked until this government
was elected, and this government's program of voluntarism in this
field for the past year and a half has not changed things one
iota for the better.

What we need is a new law, a new law we propose to call an
Ontarians with Disabilities Act. It would have as its objective
the achievement of a barrier-free society for people with
disabilities by the year 2000. It would achieve this by requiring
old barriers to be removed and new barriers to be prevented, all
in a cost-effective way. Our proposal is not novel. There is an
international trend around the world in favour of such
legislation. Alas, Canada and Ontario specifically are lagging
woefully behind that trend.

What is the government's position on this issue? During the
last election, as is included as the last page of our brief,
Premier Harris made a solemn pledge in writing. He promised that
his government, if elected, would pass an Ontarians with
Disabilities Act in its first term, that he would work together
with us to develop it, and that new funds would be devoted to
accommodation of people with disabilities. We find, after the
election, that this commitment is not only one of the
government's but is one which is now shared by all parties. All
three parties are on record as supporting it; indeed the
opposition supported a resolution, unanimously passed last May,
of the entire Legislature calling for this promise to be kept.

What has the government done about this promise? Sadly, none
of the three elements of it has been met. The Premier has refused
to meet us, and his citizenship minister, to whom we've been
directed, has only agreed to one courtesy meeting, has offered a
lot of vague rhetoric, but has announced no commitment either as
to when an Ontarians with Disabilities Act would be introduced or
indeed as to when a public consultation might begin to develop
it, much less when it might end. Put simply, the Premier has not,
to our knowledge, even authorized the citizenship minister to
come forward with legislation, much less to support it when it is
developed.

1550

How does this affect the mandate of your committee? We say it
does in two respects. First, our brief outlines seven areas in
which government cuts are not only hurting people with
disabilities -- and that's bad enough -- but these cuts also
flatly contradict both the letter and the spirit of the Premier's
solemn, written pledge to us in seeking election to his current
office. Let me list these briefly.

First, an Ontarians with Disabilities Act will need a strong
Human Rights Commission. The government promised to increase
funding to the commission but, once elected, cut funding to the
commission, and its red tape commission suggests further
impediments to the enforcement of our human rights. That will
undermine the capacity of the government to deliver on the
Ontarians with Disabilities Act promise.

Second, the government through committing to an Ontarians with
Disabilities Act knew that a core focus of that act would be
accessible public services, including, as a core example,
accessible public transit. Yet as you've already heard,
government cuts have effectively led to a cut in paratransit
services in Toronto and elsewhere, therefore working directly
counter to the force that an Ontarians with Disabilities Act
would have.

Third, an Ontarians with Disabilities Act would require a
barrier-free workplace both in the public sector and elsewhere,
yet cuts to the Ontario public service have had a
disproportionate impact on government employees with disabilities
and government cuts to programs within the public service have
undermined the government's ability to achieve a barrier-free
workplace, a workplace within the Ontario public service itself.
This contradicts not only the Ontarians with Disabilities Act
pledge but the Premier's promise of zero tolerance of
discrimination in the Ontario public service.

Fourth, the government's plan to offload services on the
municipalities without commensurate guaranteed provincial funding
to support them will disproportionately impact on people with
disabilities since many of those areas, such as municipal
transit, social services and long-term care, are themselves of
particular importance to people with disabilities.

Fifth, privatization of government services runs the risk that
people with disabilities will lose jobs in the public service in
favour of private employers who may well not be prepared to
employ them or to provide as barrier-free an environment as the
Ontario public service now provides, albeit an imperfect one.

Sixth, as Mr Baker has outlined, cuts in the area of education
-- and by analogy, one could argue, to colleges and universities
-- are having a direct impact on people with disabilities, yet an
Ontarians with Disabilities Act would seek to remove old barriers
and prevent new ones in the education and colleges and
universities system, barriers which will be left in place or
exacerbated by the current process of downsizing and
reorganizing.

Finally, cuts to social services, while promised not to have
an impact on us, have indeed had an impact on us, as our brief
documents. The first six area of cuts are likely going to drive
more people with disabilities out of jobs, force them on to
welfare rolls and therefore make them suffer the consequences of
current welfare cuts, which they were promised to be immunized
from.

One area in which the budget cuts directly affect us is that
they flatly contradict specific commitments which an Ontarians
with Disabilities Act would seek to achieve, but there's a second
and broader impact which is equally vital. You see, all of this
cutting, all of this restructuring, all of this downsizing, all
of this privatizing is being done without any prior government
planning or commitment to ensure that in the process the needs of
people with disabilities will be met, that they will not be
adversely impacted, that no new barriers will be created, that in
the process of restructuring old barriers will be removed. In
other words, the restructuring process on the whole will likely
lead to the same kind of barrier creation that we face whenever
governments go about doing anything, while forgetting our needs
and not making a commitment to meet them.

To that end, it is our position that the government should
first enact the Ontarians with Disabilities Act and only then
undertake its program of cuts, downsizing and restructuring,
because then the government will have legislatively pre-committed
to do precisely that which it is not now doing, which is to
ensure that its activities in this area will lead to fewer, not
more, barriers for us. If you do the cuts first and pass the
Ontarians with Disabilities Act second, you will create barriers
that you may not be able to fix after the fact, or if you are
able to fix them at all, you'll be doing it only at significant
public expense, a waste of public money that we can prevent now.

Therefore, we conclude with specific recommendations, as
follows:

First, we ask this committee to call upon the government to
keep its commitment of an Ontarians with Disabilities Act, to
guarantee a date by which it will introduce that act and to
direct the Premier to meet us forthwith so we can discuss how it
will be done.

Second, we ask the committee to call upon the Minister of
Citizenship to replace vague rhetoric with real action, to meet
with us now to devise a process for public consultations which
will get this process on track.

Third, we ask this committee to call on the government to put
on hold its program of cuts, downsizing, restructuring and
privatization until the Ontarians with Disabilities Act is
enacted and enforced, to prevent the mess before it happens.

Finally, we ask this committee to call on the government to
commit, first, that its cuts, downsizing and restructuring will
indeed be undertaken in a barrier-free way for us, and second,
that it will appoint a body to independently monitor the process
so that we can be sure that it is happening in the way it ought,
not as a matter of government rhetoric but independently verified
reality.

With that, we thank you for your attention and we urge this
committee, in a non-partisan way, to join together, as the
Legislature has in the past, to call for action on the commitment
of an Ontarians with Disabilities Act so that we can replace
unnecessary barriers and avoidable waste of public money with
equality for people with disabilities, something about which we
all ought to agree.

Mrs Marion Boyd (London Centre): Thank you for coming and for
all the information you've given us. I know, David Baker, that
one of the things you have always expressed concern about is this
multiple-impact issue that David Lepofsky raises in his whole
presentation. I really thank you for giving us the ARCH Alert,
because it is a way for all of us to understand the impact in
many, many different areas that we obviously don't have time to
talk about today.

David Lepofsky, you clearly are carrying on with your efforts
to try and keep governments of whatever ilk from making the
mistake of creating more barriers, especially at a time of great
restructuring. Can you talk to me about some of the obvious
barriers you think we're going to create with the kind of
legislation the government has brought forward this term?

Mr Lepofsky: I think a couple of examples would be these: The
government is undertaking restructuring of the health care
system, involving shutting down some services and amalgamating
others. In going through that process, even if one accepts that
those cuts are appropriate -- and I'm not speaking to that; I'm
simply saying even if one accepts that that is appropriate -- if
the planners do not make sure that the facilities they keep open,
the facilities and programs they design, are physically and
programmatically accessible to us, then you're going to have a
disaster before it happens.

If you offload long-term care primarily aimed at people with
disabilities, social services substantially aimed at people with
disabilities, on municipalities without guaranteeing funding and
assured levels of service, then you're essentially ensuring that
barriers will have to be created, if not due to underfunding,
then due to underplanning.

Finally, if you look at the government's own internal activity
within the public service, there used to be a systemic
accommodation fund run by the Management Board Secretariat. It
used to fund activities aimed at identifying and removing
systemic barriers in the Ontario public service. That fund has
been absolutely abolished. You can't find barriers and remove
them if you abolish the very fund which, in its own modest way,
was there to finance such activities.

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Mr Derwyn Shea (High Park-Swansea): Thank you for your
presentation, particularly Mr Lepofsky. I have a couple of
comments and then would ask you to respond.

In terms of the OHRC restructuring, probably you will know
that the previous government put $3 million in in a one-time
grant to try and reduce the caseload, and that in fact did not
reduce the caseload. With the restructuring of the OHRC, the
backlog is now reduced from 22 months to 16 months, so at least
there's a sign of moving in that direction.

But most importantly, you refer to the ODA, because I know
that is an area of real concern to you. It's interesting for me
to note that in your conversations, I think with the minister if
not with others, you knew that the government's first initiative
was to move in the area of the vulnerable adults and also for the
equal opportunity plan, and then it was to move into the area of
the ODA.

I know you've politely declined to be involved in the first
two initiatives because you're very much focused on ODA, and I
applaud that, but if I can assure that the letter of 24 May that
the Premier wrote to you indicating that the ODA "in the
first term of office within the economic goalposts of the Common
Sense Revolution" is still a commitment that is made by the
government, I hope that will bring some comfort to you. I
appreciate your anxiousness to get on with the consultation
process.

In that regard, I'd like your insight into why the previous
government failed to enact its own private member's bill dealing
with an ODA.

Mr Lepofsky: Let me begin by correcting three misstatements in
your question: Firstly, the government cuts to the Human Rights
Commission have perhaps reduced the backlog, but it's been done
in significant part by turning away meritorious cases. In a
conversation with a professional colleague and friend who acts
for defendants, respondents, he laughingly told me how he can get
cases dismissed now on the most technical grounds that even he
didn't think were of any merit. So when you cut budget and cut
cases, you reduce backlog but you don't deliver justice. That's
the first mistake.

I would note that your Premier promised during the election to
take money from the Employment Equity Commission, which you
abolished, and put it into the Human Rights Commission. That was
an election promise that has not been met -- the opposite.

Secondly, with respect to our involvement in the equal
opportunity plan, you stated that your minister told us that she
was going to move first on the vulnerable adults and equal
opportunity initiatives. With respect, she wouldn't even meet us
for the first year, so she didn't tell us anything like that. In
any event, we didn't refuse to participate in the equal
opportunity plan initiative. We were asked to participate in it
with 48 hours' notice, on a prior understanding that it couldn't
lead to new legislation. What we said was, "We'll talk to
you about it, but we'll tell you that equal opportunity plans not
backed by legislation are like shooting someone in the head six
times and then asking them if they prefer Tylenol or aspirin to
solve their headache."

Finally, with respect to the question of the prior government,
I dare say that disability is easily used as political football
by any party, and we don't really want to be that football. We'd
rather hear about why people will come together to pass this law
than why they couldn't come together in the past to deal with it.
What we would like to see is the non-partisan and bipartisan
support that we've seen in the Legislature at the level of
rhetoric turned into action, and if the opposition parties are
prepared to support this kind of legislation, as they've said
they are, we'd like to see the government, which has the policy
resources it does, devote them now to the process of developing
the legislation so we can get on with it.

Mrs Lyn McLeod (Fort William): Mr Shea's reference to the
Premier's letter suggesting that the commitment to the Ontario
disabilities act still stands reminds me of an answer that was
given in the House a couple of hours ago in terms of commitments
to children, that those commitments still stand, and that the
reason they still stand is because they haven't been met yet.
Since this is the final presentation to our committee hearings, I
think it summarizes what we've heard, that the only thing that
has been static in the government's policies in relationship to
the disabled is the commitment to bring in an Ontario
disabilities act.

I think the point you make is so well taken that your
recommendations in terms of what action is needed now could form
the basis of the report of this committee to government. If the
act were in place before any of the cuts take place or any of the
downsizing or offloading takes place, then there would be an
umbrella under which we could assess the impact of those changes
on the disabled.

I trust that the government members on the committee will
support those recommendations as recommendations from this
committee to government. If they do, it would be absolutely
consistent with the commitments that have been made on the part
of all three parties, as you note.

I have so many questions that I've been rapidly trying to scan
the brief that you didn't get an opportunity to present in the
time we had, where you raise a number of questions about the
shifting in responsibility for services to the municipal level. I
suspect I'm only going to be able to get in one or two, so I just
want to flag for the record the fact that these questions you
have raised are unanswered. Some of them have answers.

I wonder whether ARCH will address their concerns based on
what answers we have, for example, on long-term care, the fact
that there is to be, given what we've been told by the
government, a long-term-care agency that will determine the
entire budget, including the budget not only for residential care
but for community care in the long-term area. We don't know what
the relationship of the long-term-care agency and the CCACs will
be, other than that CCACs will continue to exist, but the agency
will determine budgets across the province, pool the money and
redistribute it. I'm hoping that ARCH will have an opportunity to
address any concerns related to that process before it becomes a
fact.

Mr Baker: If I may briefly respond to that, ARCH Alert raises
questions because we obviously don't have answers to the kinds of
questions you're pointing out that must be raised. We're hoping
that you and indeed all members of the committee will ask those
kinds of questions so that big mistakes are not made.

The Vice-Chair: Your time is up. Thank you very much. We
appreciate your presentation today.

Mr Baker: Thank you for the opportunity.

The Vice-Chair: Ladies and gentlemen of the committee, we have
one other item of business to attend to today: an amendment to
the membership of the subcommittee on committee business.

Mrs McLeod: On a point of order or information, Mr Chair:
Prior to moving on to the specific amendments, I understand that
three briefs have been tabled for the committee today. I first of
all make an assumption that these briefs will be entered for the
record of the committee and I think it's important to note them
in the minutes in deference of people who people who have made
the effort to write and express their concerns. One is from the
Ontario Prader-Willi Syndrome Association, one is from the
Muscular Dystrophy Association of Canada and the other is from
Marlene Crawford of Windsor, Ontario, who has submitted a
personal brief.

I'm also wondering whether it was not possible for those
individuals to make presentations to the committee today. Is that
something they had requested?

The Vice-Chair: My understanding is that by agreement of the
subcommittee, all the delegations that wanted to be heard in
person were heard, that others were asked to submit written
briefs and that those briefs are part of the official record.

Mrs McLeod: That's fine. Thank you, Mr Chair.

The Vice-Chair: We have two motions from the opposition with
respect to the official opposition's membership on the
subcommittee.

Mrs McLeod: I move that the membership of the subcommittee on
committee business be amended by substituting Ms Castrilli for Mr
Patten.

The Vice-Chair: Any discussion? All in favour? Opposed, if
any? Carried.

Mrs McLeod: Second, I move that the membership of the
subcommittee on committee business be amended by substituting Mrs
Caplan for Mr Gravelle.

The Vice-Chair: Is that supported? All in favour? Opposed?
Carried.

That's all of our business for today, therefore I declare this
meeting adjourned. Oh, I spoke too soon.

Mr Michael Gravelle (Port Arthur): It seems to me that we had
allocated a certain number of hours for witnesses. If I'm
correct, a couple of groups didn't show up, which says to me that
we may still have some time left for witnesses. Is that correct?
I'm saying that so the subcommittee is aware of that, as we had
allocated a certain amount of time for witnesses to leave enough
time for the committee, but I think it should be remembered that
it's probably an hour. All I know is that a couple ofgroups that
were scheduled didn't show up. I just think the subcommittee
should be aware of that in terms of their planning.

The Vice-Chair: It's closer to half an hour. We'll refer that
matter to the subcommittee. Any other business? No? Adjourned.